Discipline Before Death
by TecoTuesday
Summary: A guardsman of the Mordian Iron Guard faces down hordes of orks and experiences the horrors that await the Imperial Guard on the battlefield. My first fanfic so all comments are appreciated!
1. Forward To Our Deaths

I looked around me at the mud and the mush of our trenches. At points, you couldn't distinguish man from mud as our uniforms were bathed in the filth. We all stood in glum silence. That is, until the artillery barrage opened up. I quietly tried to quell all fear of our assault that was sure to come next. The emperor protects. That was the only comforting thought I could think up. But it was enough.

A few minutes later we were formed into crisp lines and marched onward towards the wretched greenskins. I heard the sounds of combat all around me-vehicles rumbled behind me, officers bellowed orders with furious voices, and aircraft screamed overhead, but I did not turn my head to see what made these noises. My training had taught me to ignore the chaos around me and focus on my orders, so I continued marching forward.

Our march was interrupted when a swarm of bullets cut down several men around me. Their blood sprayed all around them, my lasgun got covered in the stuff. Their screams were drowned out by the crackling of lasguns as the front rank fired a volley.

Whatever hostiles had attacked us were apparently dead, as we received no incoming fire, we just stood there, watching for any sign of more enemies. Then a flash of light. Blood and gore splattered me from head to toe, my entire left side was painted by what was left of my comrades. My ears were filled with the screams of our wounded and the enemy alike. I just stood there staring at the massive hole in our ranks. It took a smack in the head by the man on my right to remind me of my duty to the emperor. I addressed gaps and opened fire on the greenskins flowing towards us.

The crackling of lasguns filled my ears, it was deafening. But that was fine, because the only thing that mattered was us and those damn greenskins who thought they could stand against the emperor. They died like the animals they were. They kept coming and we kept killing.

Eventually we ran out of greenskins to kill. Before we could address ranks I looked at the men around me. What I saw sickened me. Guardsmen were piled up at my feet, some dead, some dying. Regardless, as soon as I heard the order I marched forward with my comrades. These orks were gonna pay. We were marched over a small rise, and the first thing I noticed was the orks waiting for us.

In perfect synchronization with each other and the order, a volley was fired. Immediately after,the first rank dropped to a knee and the second rank fired. Greenskins disappeared in bloody mists, but there were too many of them to hold of with just laz fire. The second rank began firing as fast as possible while the first rank kept the orks back by bayonet point. I was in the second rank, so I simply fired until my lasgun wouldn't fire any more. Then I reloaded and kept firing. Green mush splattered on me as I fired point blank into an ork who managed to hack the head off the guardsman in front of me. I quickly dropped to a knee and took his place.

I sprayed fire downrange killing several orks, but like my comrades I also had to make use of my bayonet. A slightly larger than normal ork charged me head on. Everyone around me opened fire on it, but the thing had armor attached (well more like random pieces of hard material) and while our laz fire was slowing it down the thing kept coming. As it reached me I calmly took my lasgun and with all my pent up rage bayoneted the damn thing straight into the orks torso,right into a small part where his ramshackle armor didn't cover.

I had so much force behind the blow the ork was knocked backward and continued to be sprayed by laz fire. He collapsed before he could take another step towards us. Unfortunately for me my lasgun was stuck in the bastard's torso. Not wanting to step out from formation I retrieved a lasgun from the man I had replaced.

The last of the orks were dealt with, and our formation rushed to the positions previously occupied by the orks, including a series of trenches which we promptly occupied. As I hopped into the trench I looked around me and realized the full extent of the assault, as far as the eye could see guardsmen had advanced with us. Not just others in the 10th Mordian either, guardsmen from an assortment of regiments had made the push. It was inspiring how many men were willing to die for our emperor. Or, for some of the less pious, were willing to die because their commissar had a pistol pointed at their backs.

During the lull in the action after we set up in the new defensive position, a captain came through the lines and began ordering men to join first platoon, or as it's also known the "Veteran Platoon". "Sir, arn't we supposed to be veterans to join 1st platoon?" asked a guradsman.

"Yep," replied the captain in a gruff tone, "but since the veteran company got wiped out, the restrictions have been...loosened." The captain continued picking the occasional man to join the veteran platoon. A bit later I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to face the Captain.

"What's your name private?" the Captain asked me.

"Guardsman Odmar Konig, Sir!" I quickly replied and clicked my heels together.

"Welcome to the veteran platoon Guardsman."

This was my first deployment. After my first contact with the enemy, I had been appointed to join the veteran platoon. To say the least, I was shocked. But orders were orders, so I followed the other men who had been appointed to the veteran platoon. I arrived at a large grouping of men listening to lieutenant speak.

"So you're my new platoon, eh? Well we operate a bit different here. Basically we fight like the rest of the guard, so no more tight formations. The sergeants will be coming around shortly so just join up with one of them and we'll be off to scout."


	2. An Orky Surprise

A slap on the back prompted me to turn and face a woman with sergeant insignia. "You're with me guardsman." she said with a massive grin on her face. And with that I followed my new squad leader out of the trench and into the muck. There were 8 others with us, all of them, like me, were uncomfortable with the spread out formation we were using. While our sergeant (who soon introduced herself as Beck) was sticking close to cover and slouching, the rest of us defaulted to our training and stood straight up and walked forward regardless of cover. It took Beck a few tries to get us to be a little less conspicuous, but eventually we got the hang of it.

The area we were moving through was filled with small hills so we always made sure to peak over before moving down them. Upon one of these hills, as I looked at the area behind us making sure no kommandos were being sneaky I heard a burst of fire followed up by the snapping of lasgun fire in reply. A quick sweep revealed the rest of my squad opening fire over the crest of a hill. I quickly moved up to my rapidly firing squad mates and peeked over the hill.

I had never seen so many orks in one place. It was insane. Beck screamed at us to follow her as she turned and sprinted for our lines. As fast as we could, we followed. Beck was hysterical, I could hear the suppressed panic in her voice as she voxed in what we had found. I couldn't blame her. Shots began landing around us, so we ran faster. One of the men in front of me took a shot straight through the skull. I could hear a wet splat as his head disappeared, poor guy. Other than that the orks couldn't hit anything.

But you don't need to be able to aim if you're using explosives. A single explosion took out half the squad, their limp bodies being tossed into the air. After that, a serious of explosives went off behind me. I could hear the orks yelping as they were turned to paste by the artillery.

Before I could fully comprehend that I had almost been killed by supposed "friendlies", the rest of my squad and I reached the friendly trenches. Not a second after we jumped into the trench everyone around us opened up on the orks. No matter how much fire we put into them, they kept coming. A scream to my right alerted me to the orks coming down our trench. I charged them screaming and firing from the hip. I didn't get 5 feet before one of the orks raised his shoota and blew my left arm off. I fired off a few more shots one handing my lasgun, but another ork jumped into the trench right in front of me and swatted me to the ground.

I woke up a few days later. Luckily for me, I was given a replacement arm. After I regained consciousness I was given a day to get used to my new arm before I was pushed back into the fray.

Once I arrived at the front I was given the low-down of what happened by Beck. Apparently as soon as I hit the ground reinforcements showed up. Lemon Russ reinforcements. They cut the orks down, giving a medic enough time to patch me up and haul me to the rear. And enough time for some Cadians to reinforce our trenches, as we had taken heavy casualties. Especially in regard to officers and NCOs. It was due to this lack of troops that I received my promotion to sargeant, and Beck got a field-promotion to Lieutenant. These promotions were necessary due to the influx of freshly trained guardsman that had just arrived from Mordia.

So here I am, now a sargeant. The backbone of a squad, expected to lead my men to glory. Yet the only difference between them and me was I had been on the planet for about 2 weeks more.


	3. New Guys

After having Beck inform me of everything that had transpired, I went to supply and got my sweet new sergeant stripes. Hopefully I would get to wear them for more than a day. And with that I went to see my squad. There were 10 guardsmen assigned under me, all of them freshly arrived to the planet. Even though they were new, the were coated in the mud that seemed to cover half this planet. Which coincidentally, I didn't even know the name of. I didn't really care though.

I assembled my squad in one of the trenches and introduced myself to them. I was about to ask one of them their name when the orks decided it would be a great time to fire some mortars at us."GET DOWN!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The mortar rounds started landing all around me. One of my new squad mates, the largest and meanest looking one, took some shrapnel straight through the eye. He didn't even scream, he just died instantly. My stomach dropped as I felt a swoosh near me and heard a muddy splat. Not a foot away from me was a dud mortar shell stuck in the mud. I nearly pissed myself. After the shock I had the common sense to run down the trench away from the dud. Some quick yelling made my squad do the same. Just in time too, as another mortar round landed on top of the dud making a extra large explosion that took out one member of my squad who hadn't gotten far enough away before he started praying. The emperors best protection is common sense.

I decided getting the names of my squad wasn't important. If they survived more than 2 days I would figure out who the were. Those next two days were exactly like the first, mortars falling around us like rain. Occasionally I heard our artillery respond, but that was little conciliation to us down here on the receiving end of those mortars. Eventually those two days had passed and it was time for me to learn the names of the men and women who were still alive. There were 7 of them, Emmerick, Sepp, Ottilyn, Oswin, Bartoma, Gildara, and Andris. They survived 2 days of mortar bombardment so they had a little bit of luck on their side. They were gonna need it.

It was time to advance. Word had come down to form up the platoon and prepare to advance. Beck shouted us all into position, my squad and I were smack middle of the line, Beck was only a few feet to my right. Everyone was covered and mud, and smelled like the ground around them. That is to say, they smelled like the decaying corpses of orks mixed with feces. Luckily for me, Beck had us moving out within a few minutes.

Our tight formation advanced across the muddy, ork-body covered ground in front of the trenches. I occasionally had to order one of my men or women to move faster when they started lagging behind but other than that we were moving along with great efficiency. I could only wait for us to meet the enemy. It took much longer than the last assault for us to reach the greenskins. But eventually we found the bastards. With Beck's order I fired my lasgun, it's sound adding to the collective snapping of our first volley. A few more orks charged towards us so we fired another volley. And another. they were coming piecemeal, there was no way they could break us like this.

A decent sized wave began charging towards us. A few wildly sprayed their shootas at us. One of their rounds glanced off my shoulder armor, surprising me a little but leaving no other ill effects. Turned out the armor integrated into our uniforms can actually help. Shocking. A volley was fired at the charging orks, but before Beck could order another the Kommandos sprang their trap. The first alert I got was a shower of mud and blood coating my back, a concussive forcing knocking me off balance, and a ringing in my ears. The grenades were followed up by shouts of "WAAAAGGGGHHHHHHH!" and the sound of feet slapping the slushy ground behind me. Thinking fast, Beck ordered the second rank to about face and fire at will.

Seeing as the man behind me (Oswin was his name) had lost his lower body to the Kommando's grenades and the orks charging the front rank were being repulsed pretty well by the rest of the guardsmen up front, I turned around. Kommandos were coming at us as fast as their muscular legs could move them. I saw what seemed to be their leader and began hosing him with lasgun fire. It only pissed him off. He looked me in the eyes, raised his shoota, and opened up. While his atrocious aim was great for me, it wasn't so good for those around me. Beck got her lasgun knocked out of her hands and a couple of the guardsmen around her fell to the ground screaming.

Right after Beck lost her gun, the Kommandos got within melee range. One of the greenskins swung his choppa at Beck, she dodged it allowing the men around her to stab the thing to the ground. Beck ripped the choppa out of the dead ork's hands waved it around a bit and ordered everyone to hold the line. My witnessing of Beck was interrupted when a Kommando tried to chop my head off. He almost did too but I ducked at the last moment. I then sprang upward, and putting the power of my legs and arms behind it, bayoneted the ork straight through the throat and into his tiny brain. I retracted my bayonet and kicked the ork to the ground.

The Kommandos were all killed, either by lasgun fire or by bayonet point. With them taken care of, I turned to face the direction of the original orks who had served as the Kommando's distraction. There were just a few left, quickly finished off by ranged fire. Beck, (having decided she didn't want to get shot by a commissar for using an ork weapon, so had exchanged it for a lasgun on the ground) ordered the advance to continue. On we advanced, leaving behind those we lost.


	4. Trying Not To Die

The close, linear formation of guardsmen I was in continued to move forward. The battlefield around me was loud. Too loud. And by that I mean it was so loud I couldn't hear the orkish deff dread moving towards me. So when I saw it, it was already withing shooting range. And so were the 5 others I could see. And so was the horse of orks behind them.

Beck's cry of "fire at will" was cut off when she took a big shoota round to the chest. My vision after that was obscured by the rain of mud and flesh as the weaponry of several deff dreads and lots of infantry swept over the platoon. The sound of all the weapons firing combined with the explosions and the screams deafened me. The flying body of someone landed on me, knocking me to the ground and saving my life as several bullets slapped into the poor guy on top of me.

An explosion nearby whipped me forward about 10 feet; I rolled over the bodies of the people who not 2 minutes ago I had been fighting with. I was covered in their guts. As my vision got blurry around the edges I saw what looked like a good amount of Imperial Guard tanks rolling towards me. A bit too late I thought to myself before everything went black.

Everything hurt. But at least my limbs could all move, including my prosthetic left arm. I slowly opened my eyes and sat up, groaning as pain rushed through my core. The battle was still raging around me, but at least the Guard lines had moved up a little so I wasn't directly getting shot at. Up ahead of me a Baneblade was blasting orks to bits, along with a couple Lemon Russ tanks, some Cadian infantry, and a platoon or two of Mordians. More importantly were the bodies all around me. It seemed that the entire platoon I was a part off had been wiped out. There were a few moving like me but the majority of the platoon lay still, heaped on top of one another

A Cadians medic sprinted up and dropped to a knee beside me. After checking me over for wounds he pointed towards a platoon size grouping of Mordians near the company commander. I half jogged half stumbled over that way. As I got close one of the men in the company commanders enterouge walked over to me and told me what was going on.

" Sergeant, over here!"

"Yes sir?"

"These are the men left from the 2 platoons who took the most casualties. Seeing as your the only sergeant left, I'm promoting you to Lieutenant to lead these men."

The first thought that ran through my mind after this was 'I hope I don't end up like Beck'. The second thought was 'oh crap'. My rapid rise through the ranks really showed me how hellish it is down here. My only qualification was I hadn't been killed like everyone around me. I could feel my confidence rising as quickly as my sarcasm.

I walked over to my new platoon. There wasn't a single person in it who wasn't covered in blood. With grim looks the platoon formed up into the linear formation typical of the Iron Guard. I picked out three sergeants from the guardsmen assembled before me, not one of them seemed fazed by their recent promotion. I then found a vox-operator and instructed him to stay by my side no matter what. With my new platoon all set I reported to my company commander that the platoon was fit for battle and requested his orders.

"I tell you what just sit tight and pick up a few stragglers from the rest of the survivors, I'll vox you when there's a gap you need to fill."

"Yes sir!" I replied, excited by the opportunity to not get shot at for a little bit. We sat around for ten minutes, a couple ragged looking men and women walked over and joined the platoon, but not many. The battle was moving forward, so I decided to move the platoon a bit closer to be sure we didn't get left behind.

My vox operator tappes me on the shoulder. "Sir, defensive positions are being set up ahead. Command wants us to help fill them."

With that, I informed my platoon what we were doing and continued marching through the horrid battlefield. Destroyed tanks, and tons upon tons of bodies littered the battlefield. I was used to the stench by now. On the bright side, I was able to find a las pistol and chainsword in the bodies. With my new weapons in hand I arrived at the defensive positions and ordered my platoon to start digging.


End file.
